First things first: Wuthering Heights is a demented novel. If people lose their minds over Emerald Fennell’s sexed-up film adaptation, remember that Emily Brontë got there first. When she published it in 1847, under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, readers were appalled by its violence and immorality, and by the incestuous, narcissistic Cathy and Heathcliff.Fennell has taken the film in an S&M direction — a test screening featured “a bondage-tinged sexual encounter involving horse reins” — but it’s all there in the book: the floggings, the slappings, the cruelty and the shared death wish. Add a banging Charli XCX soundtrack, the Adolescence star Owen Cooper as young Heathcliff and a controversy over the leads, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi (too old, too white: Brontë’s Heathcliff is a “Gypsy beggar” and “a lascar”), and you have a hit tailor-made for the I-love-it-I-hate-it era of film consumption.The story, which is on the A-level English syllabus, is also fantastically complicated, but in a nutshell: Cathy Earnshaw’s father rescues the young Heathcliff from the streets of Liverpool and brings him to live in the family home on the Yorkshire moors. He and Cathy become close — but when they grow up Cathy is torn between Heathcliff and a more conventional life with their wealthy neighbour, Edgar Linton. After Heathcliff runs away she marries Linton; he returns three years later to seduce Linton’s sister Isabella, and all hell breaks loose: there are ghosts, howling storms, dug-up graves and murdered puppies.It’s a lot, which is what attracted the director of the equally unhinged Saltburn (remember what Barry Keoghan did with a dug-up grave). Last September Fennell told the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival that Wuthering Heights “cracked me open”: “I’ve been driven mad by this book. I know that if somebody else made it I’d be furious.” When she first saw Elordi in his Heathcliff sideburns she “wanted to scream” with excitement. (...)Despite its strangeness and deep Yorkshire roots, Brontë’s story has resonated at the level of myth — a story about crazy, stupid love that every generation wants another go at. (...)Anna Calder-Marshall was 23 when she played Cathy opposite the future 007 Timothy Dalton in the 1970 version. The film’s US producer, Louis Heyward, wanted to shake things up, telling reporters: “Olivier and Oberon portrayed him as a regular nice guy and her as sweetness and light. That was not the truth and Hollywood now goes in for the truth. Heathcliff was a bastard and Cathy a real bitch and that’s how they’ll be.” (...)What does [Peter] Bowker think Wuthering Heights is about? “If I wanted to piss everyone off, I’d say toxic masculinity. Really, it’s about a series of unfortunate men making very bad decisions, starting with Heathcliff being taken from Liverpool. It’s about class and generational pain — Heathcliff makes a decision to cause damage and sticks with it.” (...)The other star of Brontë’s book is the Yorkshire moors, lovingly shot for Arnold by her longtime cinematographer Robbie Ryan despite six weeks of unwanted sunshine. “We expected it to be miserably wet,” he says, laughing. “We needed rain for a scene where Heathcliff walks away, but the pipes froze and I had to do it with a watering can from behind the camera.” Even so, the location turned into a mudbath. “I was running around with a 35mm camera in rugby boots and a T-shirt that said There Will Be Mud.” There were animals everywhere. “Tons of dogs, tons of horses. Wuthering Heights is a love story, for sure, but it’s the environment that makes it for me — it should be a shot in the arm of nature.” (Melissa Demes)
The four-mile trail from the village of Haworth to Top Withens in West Yorkshire is well trodden; numerous footprints squelched into the boggy ground by those seeking the view said to have inspired the setting for Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights. The landscape rolls in desolate waves of brown bracken. A lone tree punctuates the scene. It’s bleakly, hauntingly beautiful.With the release of Emerald Fennell’s new film of the Gothic masterpiece starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi next week, Haworth and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park, where the book is set, are braced for a slew of visitors.The local residents, though, seem distinctly unfazed by the attention.“We’re used to crowds,” shrugs Craig Verity, the landlord at the Kings Arms, a pub at the top of Haworth’s steep cobbled Main Street, just steps from the parsonage where the Brontës were raised.Brontë country has been milking the connection for decades. On a wall in the Kings Arms, a board promotes a selection of Bridgehouse cask ales named Charlotte, Anne, Emily and Branwell, the latter being the lesser-known Brontë brother.In the surrounding streets, there’s the Brontë Hotel and the Brontë Bar and Restaurant, as well as – somewhat tenuously – Brontë Balti. (...)For this new film, the cast stayed at Simonstone Hall, a sumptuous country house hotel in Yorkshire Dales. It’s a 20-minute drive from here to Swaledale, where many of the scenes were shot.“They were lovely people, and brilliantly undemanding,” said the owner, Jake Dinsdale, noting that Robbie had since been back for a stay with her husband. “Although they’d booked out all 20 rooms, our restaurant was still open to the public, and the cast enjoyed being around the firepit to toast s’mores, or sitting down to a roast dinner or afternoon tea.”Haworth, pictured here, and many of the filming locations in the Yorkshire Dales national park are braced for a slew of visitors. Photograph: grough.co.uk/AlamyHis own attitude is equally relaxed. “I don’t know what the film will do,” he said. “It could all be a flash in the pan, and that’s fine. If it sticks, that’s also great. What I do know is that I won’t be renaming any rooms as ‘The Jacob Elordi Room’ or ‘The Heathcliff Room’. (...)Tony Watson, head of economy and tourism for North Yorkshire council, said: “The area has featured in so many films and series; we’re experienced in managing that. Post-Covid, we were already seeing more younger people getting outdoors and exploring the county, and this demographic will doubtless grow as the film showcases the area’s beauty and authenticity.“We’ll have to wait until the release to see whether there’s some iconic shot that people want to replicate. If there is, hopefully it will be somewhere like Aysgarth Falls, which has all of the necessary infrastructure in place – otherwise, we’ll need to suggest alternatives that don’t make mountain rescue unhappy.”Back at The Kings Arms, Jack Greatrex, who lives in the area, is sanguine. “The Brontë sisters shaped this village for future generations, and for lovers of landscape and literature,” he said. “This film could mean that they continue to do so.”Whatever effect the new film has, said Watson, they’re ready for it. “I’m the luckiest head of tourism imaginable – the film is going to do my job for me.” (Sarah Rodrigues)
The moody moorland and pretty villages of Yorkshire are the romantic backdrop of the film Wuthering Heights, which is set to be released in Australia on Thursday, February 12, 2026.Based on Emily Brontë’s novel, it stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, and is directed by Emerald Fennell.Wuthering Heights film locations are in both the Yorkshire Dales and the West Yorkshire countryside.It was filmed in Arkengarthdale, Swaledale and the village of Low Row.Yorkshire Dales National Park has a starring role.The Visit England team have come up with a two-day touring itinerary to immerse yourself in the movie, its mood and locations.There are plenty of good places to stop — Haworth, Hawes, Arkengarthdale, Low Row and Top Withens.Alongside confirmed filming locations, it includes places closely linked to Brontë’s life and the landscapes that inspired the novel. (Stephen Scourfield)
Tucked away into a corner of West Yorkshire, Top Withins stands proud against the elements it has been battered by for hundreds of years.As a self-proclaimed big fan of Wuthering Heights, I was eager to complete the pilgrimage popular with Brontë fans. Top Withins has long been rumoured to be the inspiration behind the classic novel, and it's easy to see why. Standing high on the moors, the ruined farmhouse is exposed to wind and rain, a landscape of moorland and hills surrounding it.Top Withins is a stone's throw away from Haworth, where Charlotte, Emily and Anne lived with their brother Branwell and father Patrick. The bustling village is now home to pubs, boutique shops and the Bronte Parsonage, which stands proud in front of the graveyard. (Sophie Corcoran)
Vogue publishes a Wuthering Heights-Coded Guide To Brontë Country:The team behind the venue – Writers’ Bloc – said they are inviting visitors not just to experience Haworth, but to actively contribute to its story.A spokesman said: “Founded by real-life couple and creative entrepreneurs Jamila Juma-Ware and Matthew Wignall, the space blends literature, cocktails and community under the ethos ‘come as strangers, leave as friends’.” (...)To coincide with the film’s release, Writers’ Bloc is launching a Creative Love Letter Competition, encouraging guests to write love letters to Haworth itself, which celebrate the village’s power to inspire creativity. Selected letters will be displayed in the venue, with winners receiving dinner and drinks. (Greg Wright)
Haworth is a 20-minute drive through the Pennines. At the top of its cobbled high street sits the Brontë Parsonage, the house where Charlotte, Anne and Emily lived with their brother Branwell. Nestled next door is St. Michael and All Angels Church (where their father Patrick was curate) and its deeply atmospheric graveyard. Charlotte and Emily are buried in the family vault in the church; on show inside is Charlotte’s marriage certificate; she is listed with no profession despite being renowned then as the author of Jane Eyre.
The house itself is hauntingly close to when the family were in residence. The front parlour room is laid out as if they’d just broken for tea, the small dining room table they worked at scattered with a writing block and ink, newspapers, cups and saucers. But tragedy, too, isn’t far from sight; against the wall is the sofa where Emily died from Tuberculosis, aged 30. (Victoria Moss)
I’ve been lucky enough to be given the opportunity to immerse myself deeper into the story, with a visit to a replica film set of Cathy’s Thrushcross Grange bedroom, which was used for shooting the new Wuthering Heights adaptation.It was here, in the book, where some of the biggest moments happened – particularly in the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. (...)çIt’s a lavish, sumptuous space, with a silk canopied bed and an ornate dressing table, which encapsulates the grandeur and refinement of the Linton family’s estate, perhaps illuminating what captured Cathy’s attention as a young woman and subsequently were her reasons for marrying Linton – sealing hers and Heathcliff’s fate.In the film, the bedroom was decorated by her husband Linton, whose design choices were an ode to his wife and her untamed spirit.The room is apparently painted the exact Pantone shade of actress Robbie’s skin, with vein detailing across the wall panels which deepen as the film continues, representing Cathy’s intensity and wild nature. (Sophie Goodall)
Deutsche Welle has a ten-minute video piece about Wuthering Heights 2026 with particular emphasis in the alleged non-whiteness of Heathcliff. Among others, the video features Mithu Sanyal, author of
The wonder of it is that Wuthering Heights, which was declared to be “unquestionably and irredeemably monstrous” upon publication, exists at all, its creative origins forever obscured by the brief and enigmatic life of its author. The novel, published in 1847 under a male pen name (Ellis Bell), was written by Emily Brontë, a 27-year-old virgin so reclusive she makes Emily Dickinson seem positively sociable, who lived in a parsonage together with her gifted sisters and alcoholic brother in the tiny village of Haworth in Yorkshire, England. (...)For all its heaving drama, the plot of Wuthering Heights is remarkably simple, even primitive. It is the age-old one of a soured romance, of childhood sweethearts who are foiled by the adult reality they grow into. Boy meets girl; boy falls in love with girl; boy loses girl. And then, if the boy in question happens to be Heathcliff, with his “satanic nimbus,” as one writer put it—the romantic antihero par excellence—all hell breaks loose. (...)While watching the latest film adaptation, I kept wondering what Brontë would have made of this version of her stark, doomed story, with its graphic scenes of masturbation, B.D.S.M., and doggy-style penetration. Would she have recognized her novel at all? And what about Cathy’s outlandish, anachronistic wardrobe, replete with a red latex gown, German milkmaid corsets, and Elton John sunglasses? (...)Influenced by the aesthetics of soft porn and high fashion, this is a movie with its sights firmly fixed on Gen Z. It works, in its edgy stylistic way, and it should sell heaps of tickets. But by simplifying the arc of the original story, ending the narrative with Cathy’s death and leaving out her ghostly haunting of Heathcliff, and by making explicit what was implicit, this Wuthering Heights is, curiously, a less subversive and radical rendering of the otherworldly, inexorable desire that Emily Brontë captured almost two centuries ago. (Daphne Merkin)
Over the course of the movie, "Cathy's in her mid-20s to early 30s, which puts so much more pressure on the marriage situation," Robbie tells USA TODAY. "A bunch of people telling an 18-year-old, 'Oh, f---, you better hurry up and get married!' That doesn't really hold the same weight to a modern-day audience member."Whereas now, "particularly for women, there's suddenly this checklist that society has given you and you better have it all ticked off by the time you're 30: get married, get a house, have your career figured out, and start thinking about kids," Robbie continues. For Gen Z and millennial moviegoers, "watching an older Cathy have that pressure might carry more weight." (Patrick Ryan)
Barbie + Kim K’s gothic dress + Mills & Boon paperback = Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights
En los páramos desolados del norte de Inglaterra, donde el viento no solo azota la tierra sino también los ánimos, Emily Brontë levantó una de las novelas más inquietantes y perdurables de la literatura universal. Cumbres Borrascosas, publicada en 1847 bajo el seudónimo de Ellis Bell, sigue siendo una obra incómoda, feroz y profundamente actual, capaz de sacudir al lector incluso más de un siglo y medio después de su aparición. No es una historia pensada para tranquilizar ni para ofrecer consuelos fáciles: es, ante todo, una exploración descarnada de las pasiones humanas llevadas al extremo.La novela se desarrolla en un escenario áspero y hostil que no funciona como simple decorado, sino como una prolongación emocional de los personajes. Los páramos, el clima violento y la casa que da nombre a la obra conforman un universo cerrado, casi opresivo, donde el amor, el rencor y la obsesión crecen sin freno. Allí se forja el vínculo entre Heathcliff y Catalina Earnshaw, una relación que desafía las categorías tradicionales del romanticismo. No hay idealización ni ternura permanente: lo que los une es una fuerza primitiva, absoluta, que ignora las normas sociales, la razón y hasta los límites de la vida y la muerte. (Translation)
Michael Olivieri: Un romanzo da trasformare in balletto?Cime Tempestose di Emily Brontë. (Translation)
Postcard collector, the late Norman Ellis of Ossett enthusiastically gathered as many images of West Yorkshire as he could find.
Campaigners against proposals to build a giant windfarm on West Yorkshire moorland believe they are winning the battle – but the fight isn’t over yet.The Stop Calderdale Windfarm campaigners oppose Calderdale Energy Park proposals to put giant turbines on Walshaw Moor, above Hebden Bridge.The say in a presentation to local parish councils this month the developers revealed the have scaled back their plans for the second time.Their original proposal in September 2023 was for 65 turbines, reduced to 41 in April 2025.They have now reduced that number further to 34 after widespread criticism and public opposition, claims the campaign group.The group adds the timescale for the project has also slipped, with Statutory Public Consultation previously scheduled for January now being put back to April 2026.Despite believing it shows the developers might be on the back foot, the group warns the fight is far from over.“The developers are clearly on the defensive, but the latest proposals would still be incredibly damaging to the carbon-rich blanket peat bogs on Walshaw Moor and the endangered ground-nesting birds which breed on this internationally important Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Area (SPA). (John Greenwood)
Jane EyreA sweeping, atmospheric love story that feels timelessly tender, Jane Eyre is for romantics who adore emotional intensity wrapped in quiet strength. Jane and Mr. Rochester’s bond is slow, smoldering, and full of moral complexity, the kind of love you root for even when they stumble. It’s haunting, passionate, and beautifully earnest. Every chapter feels like a heartbeat you can hear, not just read. (Simran Sukhnani)
[Valerie] Martire’s Lucy shares more in common with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre than her original fictional counterpart. She desires for adventure and a place in society in which her knowledge and accomplishments can be celebrated, not buried under the weight of matrimony. ( Misha Davenport)
5. Hathersage, Derbyshire“High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.” So narrates the eponymous Jane Eyre in Charlotte Brontë’s beloved novel. Having stayed in Hathersage in 1845, Brontë set her story in the charming Hope Valley village. Also inspiring her, as per that quote, was the surrounding, brooding Dark Peak scenery, and not least Stanage Edge — a four-mile gritstone ridge that offers memorable vistas for miles. Modern-day Hathersage has a heated outdoor pool, but you may just prefer its churchyard. Little John, Robin Hood’s loyal outlaw companion, is supposedly buried here, as a gravestone attests. (Oliver Perry)
Mia and Sam are joined by THE drag queen historian Elizabeth the Thirsty.We share our love for making history fun, imagine a Brontë-themed drag show and learn about a secret language used by the Georgians...
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by Eleanor HoughtonBloomsbury Visual ArtsISBN: 9781350514089February 2026Meet the real, thinking, feeling woman that was Charlotte Brontë, as told in this biography by the surviving witnesses to her life – the clothes that she once wore.These garments were present as she penned Jane Eyre, as she walked the cobbled streets of Haworth, and as she stood with her fiancé at the altar in the summer of 1854. Yet, until now, their testimonies had remained unheard.Renowned Brontë scholar and dress historian Eleanor Houghton's innovative, richly illustrated biography, Charlotte Brontë's Life Through Clothes, finally gives voice to the gowns, bonnets, shawls, corsets, parasols and boots that make up the novelist's wardrobe.Secrets are revealed in their very fibres. Brontë's steel busked corset tells the story of corporate espionage and forbidden love, whilst her striped, silk dress shows how she coped with the new-found pressures of fame. When exposed to 21st century technology, a tiny sample of fabric from her 'Thackeray Dress' reveals important innovations of the Industrial Revolution going on around her and a black lace veil, worn after the deaths of her siblings, expresses how she dealt with repeated familial loss.These clothes, some of which still bear the imprint of her foot or the sweat from her pores, prove themselves to be far more than mere celebrity curios. When 'read' alongside letters, portraits, her novels and the recollections of those who knew her well, Charlotte emerges as a woman altogether braver, more vulnerable, less isolated, less provincial, more fashion conscious than anyone ever expected. Myths are shattered, preconceptions challenged, and, the real Charlotte Brontë, beyond the famous author, finally emerges.
Sales of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights have risen by 469% in the UK since last year, as anticipation builds for Emerald Fennell’s bold and highly anticipated film adaptation, figures from Penguin Classics UK show.In January of this year, 10,670 copies were sold, compared with 1,875 in January 2025, in what Penguin has described as an unusually large boost.Sales of the book increased by 132% after the release of the first teaser trailer for the film last September. Between the trailer’s release and the end of the year, Penguin sold 28,257 copies in the UK, compared with 12,134 over the same period in 2024.Jess Harrison, publishing director for Penguin Classics, said: “I can’t remember the last time a film adaptation generated this much excitement for the book. Wuthering Heights is one of our evergreen bestsellers, but I do think the film is coming out at the perfect moment.“There seems to be a real yearning among readers for intense, maximalist, tragic love stories,” Harrison added. “We’ve seen huge demand for similarly angsty classics like Dostoevsky’s White Nights and Sabahattin Ali’s Madonna in a Fur Coat. But Wuthering Heights stands apart in being so wild and unhinged – an extreme book for extreme times.” [...]“I don’t think an adaptation needs to be completely faithful to the book: many of the best ones – like Clueless riffing on [Jane Austen’s] Emma – aren’t,” Harrison said. “But what you hope for is that an adaptation will capture the spirit of the original. With Wuthering Heights, it’s the extreme intensity of emotion that matters the most.” (Emma Loffhagen)
My copy of the book was cheap and flimsy because I preferred spending my hard earned wages from my Saturday job at Topshop on booze. Most importantly, my heart had just been broken for the very first time.It was, of course, the end of the world, in the way that being dumped at 17 has been the end of the world for millions of teenagers since time immemorial. And in between angsty phone calls to friends and cryptic MSN status updates (if you don’t know what MSN was, it was a noughties cross between Facebook and WhatsApp), I found Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.If you haven’t read it, you might be dimly aware of the two main characters, Cathy and Heathcliff. The pair - raised together in the crumbling hall, Wuthering Heights - have a mutual obsession with each other which destroys both their happiness and that of many around them.Aged 17, their doomed romance seemed to me to be the height of what it meant to be a human. What was the point in life if I couldn’t be loved in an all-possessing way, like Heathcliff loved Cathy?When - and I must warn here, despite the book being published while Queen Victoria was on the throne, I’m about to spoil a plot point - Cathy dies, Heathcliff moans in agony. “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” I genuinely fantasised about having that quote tattooed on my ankle. Thank god my frontal lobe cortex developed in time to talk myself out of it.From the vantage point of a 17-year-old girl, it was like Emily Brontë had reached her hand through the book to take mine, just as Cathy’s smashes through the windows of Wuthering Heights.I’m not 17 any more, but I still love Wuthering Heights. It is a wild book, in every sense of the word. Far from being a conventional romance, the plot veers from passionate obsession to vengeance. Like the boxed in narrative of the book, it’s complicated. I love it because on every re-read, it takes me back to being that girl, one I remember so fondly even though my age has doubled.But I also love it now because it’s not the uncomplicated love story that it was to me at 17. Now it’s a dizzying exploration of revenge, ownership, anger, servitude, landscape. There’s love, yes, but it’s also a book about hatred.It’s an imperfect book - not nearly as ‘neat’ from a plotting perspective as Jane Eyre, written, of course, by the older Brontë sister Charlotte. I like to imagine that Emily wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, but that her pen wrote what she needed it to write in a kind of fever dream.And now it’s set to capture new fans via the film adaptation released later this month. So far, I’m nervous. Director Emerald Fenell’s last film, Saltburn, was perverse and gothic and frankly bonkers, so I think she’ll capture the spirit of the book well. The landscapes are set to be stunning, with filming having taken place across the Yorkshire Dales. I’m also excited for the soundtrack, masterminded by Charli xcx. If ever a book fits her vibe of insouciance mixed with glamour, it’s Wuthering Heights. Cathy Earnshaw is, in my eyes, the original ‘brat.But, famously, adaptations of Wuthering Heights are so hard to get right (though, for my money, Emma Rice’s stage production at York Theatre Royal a few years ago came as close as it gets). It’s too complicated, there’s a death every five pages, and half the characters have virtually identical names. And I feel very rude in saying this, but given I’m the same age as Margot Robbie, who stars in the film, I hope it’s forgivable to point out that she’s almost 20 years older than Cathy’s character in the book, and that matters. Lovestruck teenagers do and say awful things in ways we can forgive, in a way that we can’t of those in their mid-thirties. I should know.But for all my reservations, I’m excited that a new generation might come, via the film, to the book. That they will choose to inhabit Emily’s strange, twisted world. That she will, like she did for me, reach out from 1847 and grab their hands to give them permission to be wild, and passionate, and angry. That maybe, like I’ve done so many times since, they’ll decide to visit Haworth to see for themselves the landscape that inspired such a poetic tale.I don’t think I could have loved Wuthering Heights half so much now if I hadn’t read it for the first time then, and I’m so jealous of anyone who gets to experience it for their first time. The best literature not only reflects the way we think, it shows a mirror up to the way we feel. And if any of its new readers come to it heartbroken by the ends of their first loves, as I did all those years ago, so much the better. (Victoria Finan)
Emily Brontë’s genius was not for self-promotion. She hid her true identity under a pseudonym and agreed to pay £50 – more than the annual salary of a governess at the time – to get Wuthering Heights published in 1847. In contrast, the pre-publicity for Emerald Fennell’s new film adaptation, due for release on Valentine’s Day, has reached carnivalesque levels rare even in Hollywood. Few have so far seen it. But the trailer alone has already generated a babel of online response. Critiques have ranged from objections to anachronistic costumes – Margot Robbie in what looks like an Eighties wedding dress – to complaints that Jacob Elordi is “too white” to play Heathcliff. The film has been compared unfavourably to Andrea Arnold’s gritty, arthouse adaptation of 2011, which cast a black actor, James Howson, as Heathcliff.But who really is Heathcliff? Emily Brontë’s original text does indeed make it clear that his racial identity is supposed to be different from that of the Yorkshire-born characters. Picked up as a foundling on the streets of Liverpool, he’s brought to Wuthering Heights by old Mr Earnshaw, who tells his family to “take it as a gift of God, though it’s as dark as the devil” in a seeming allusion to the child’s skin colour. That neuter pronoun “it” suggests that Heathcliff is already being othered at the moment of his adoption.And yet no one in the novel ever discovers his origins. Edgar Linton thinks he might be either a “Lascar” – a term usually applied at the time to seamen from the Indian subcontinent or South East Asia – or “an American or Spanish castaway”. Perhaps, proposes the housekeeper Nelly Dean, his father was the Emperor of China and his mother an Indian queen. Elsewhere, he is described as “a dark-skinned gipsy”; and yet in one scene his face is depicted as being “as white as the wall behind him”.Andrea Arnold’s film recast Heathcliff as a survivor of the transatlantic slave trade, for which Liverpool was indeed a hub in the 18th century period in which the novel, though written in the 1840s, is set. She turned that imagined backstory into an eloquent portrayal of cycles of abuse. Yet there’s nothing in the text to suggest Heathcliff is black African. On the contrary, Nelly Dean specifically implies that he is not, when she tells him (with a casual racism that will make the modern reader flinch) that “a good heart will help you to a bonny face” even “if you were a regular black”.The success of Arnold’s film comes not from its slavish “respect” for the text but from its openness to treating it as an imaginative springboard. Over the years, Wuthering Heights has been adapted for stage and screen countless times, with spin-offs ranging from a now lost silent film to the unlikely Cliff Richard vehicle, Heathcliff: the Musical. And yet the truth about the original book is that much of what makes it a literary masterpiece is unfilmable. It’s an inscrutable text, probably intentionally so, that baffled critics when it first came out and continues to baffle scholars, not least because so few personal writings by Emily Brontë survive to explain what she intended, though the book itself hints at its literary context.That Heathcliff’s race and origins are left purposely ambiguous reflects the destabilising techniques, clearly drawn from the gothic tradition, on which the novel relies for its uncanny effects. Another is the frame narrative: the way it’s told as a tale within a tale, sometimes within another tale. We’re held at a strange distance, while paradoxically, the vivid descriptive writing makes us feel as though we’re only inches from the action.This is a tale of the supernatural – it’s a ghost story after all – couched in the language of naturalism. Domestic interiors offer themselves up with all the detailed solidness of their oak furniture. But even the realism over-reaches itself in the novel’s famous scenes of physical violence, which are so graphic as to teeter – perhaps intentionally – on the Tarentinoesque edge of parody. If you realistically filmed a grown man forcibly rubbing a child’s wrist to and fro over a broken windowpane until the blood ran down, it would be unwatchable.Wuthering Heights remains a completely uncategorisable novel, whose unique voice can’t be assimilated to the norms of Victorian fiction. And yet both it and Heathcliff do have literary forebears. Behind his character lies the Byronic anti-hero “linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes”, to quote Byron’s own Corsair.If the constancy of Heathcliff’s love for Cathy is his “one virtue”, it comes with overtones of sibling incest as the two have been brought up together as brother and sister. That too channels Lord Byron, refracting the transgressive love at the heart of his gothic tragedy Manfred, and also his notorious real-life affair with his own half-sister. Even the famous scene in which Heathcliff overhears Cathy telling Nelly that it would degrade her to marry him echoes a similar scene in Thomas Moore’s 1830 Life of Byron (a copy of which the Brontës owned) in which the teenage future poet overhears his first love tell her maid that she could never care for that “lame boy”.If Emily Brontë took these Byronic hints, she transmogrified them into something that was – and still feels – totally new and strange. Popular culture has since conventionalised Wuthering Heights into the archetypal world’s “greatest love story”, but it is far from that. No film version so far has fully represented the extent to which Heathcliff becomes a manipulative psychopath. And, despite the Byronic connections, one of the oddest things about the novel is the almost complete lack of sex. Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s works, which pulsate with frustrated sensual desire, it is often physical but never erotic.Early reports have, in contrast, called Emerald Fennell’s version “a whole other level of hot”. Judging from the trailer, its sexy, operatic production values and pounding soundtrack couldn’t be more different from Andrea Arnold’s downbeat version, which was filmed without music or make-up and seemingly with a handheld camera. I admired Arnold’s take, but I’m looking forward to Fennell’s. I’ll be judging it not on literal fidelity to the text – which is impossible – but on whether it creates its own convincing world.I’d also like – perhaps mischievously – to refer the Instagram costume cavillers to Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights, in which the young Cathy returns from Thrushcross Grange newly and smartly dressed. According to the timeline of the book, it is 1777. However, her outfit is the obviously early Victorian combo of tartan and pantaloons: a “plaid silk frock” with “white trousers”. Emily Brontë wouldn’t have cared about fashion anachronism. But she would have been amazed to discover how many people care about Wuthering Heights.
Ever since it was announced, Emerald Fennell's version of the torrid Brontë classic has been the subject of furious online discourse over everything from its casting to its costumes.The most controversial film of the year? Usually that accolade is reserved for an edgy political thriller or a taboo-busting horror movie. But the film that is currently prompting the most "discourse" – to use a polite term for it – is an adaptation of a 19th-Century novel. Ever since Emerald Fennell declared that she was following Promising Young Woman and Saltburn with her own take on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, commentators have not been short of opinions – mostly negative ones."Fennell has channelled her creative instincts into a disturbing exercise in pointless destruction," wrote Lara Brown in The Spectator – and that was five months before the film's release date next week.Everything about the film has been pilloried, from its casting to its costumes, from the actors' accents to the inverted commas around the title: it's "Wuthering Heights", not Wuthering Heights, to emphasise that this is Fennell's own interpretation of the book, rather than the book itself. The hostility has been relentless. But could the reasons for this hostility go beyond some scepticism about a dodgy-looking period drama? [...]But these quibbles raise some big questions, the first one being: So what? Why shouldn't Fennell come up with her own out-there, sexed-up version of Wuthering Heights? If Clueless can put a Jane Austen plot in 1990s California, and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet can do the same with Shakespeare, why should we be fussing about dress design?There are two obvious answers, one of them suggested by the fact that, in the trailer, Robbie's Cathy sounded posher than any screen character since, well, the toffs in Saltburn.Fennell's last film, Saltburn, was set in a stately home, and one of the best things about it was that the writer-director seemed to know her upper-class characters intimately. There is no mystery as to how she managed it: as the daughter of celebrated jewellery designer Theo Fennell, she grew up in gilded circles. To quote Patrick Sproull in Dazed, "Not a lot of 18-year-olds have their birthday party photographed by Tatler and attended by a Delevingne, multiple Guinness heirs, several members of the nobility and the daughter of Sting." In short, Fennell is posh. Indeed, her background is so privileged that when she acted in The Crown as Camilla Parker-Bowles – now better known as Queen Camilla – she didn't have to sound any grander than she does in ordinary life.This hasn't endeared her to everyone. As popular as Saltburn was, some reviews argued that it was too forgiving of its posh characters because Fennell was so posh herself. "It's a satire that never bares its claws, never lifts a finger to criticise these people," said Sproull. Other people have grumbled that Fennell's connections and advantages gave her directing career an unfair head start. This meant that many commentators were primed to dislike "Wuthering Heights" from the very beginning. The antipathy had as much to do with their feelings about Fennell as their feelings about the film.But the main reason behind all the rancour is this: people who love Brontë's novel really love Brontë's novel. They're not just fond of it, they're fixated on it. As Hephzibah Anderson wrote in a BBC article, "Most of us read Wuthering Heights in our teens. In other words, when we're wildly impressionable." Many of the book's fans go on to view it as part of their identity – and, for that matter, as part of their love lives. "I remain convinced that the precedent for chasing toxic love stories was one set out for me as a teenager, by Heathcliff," confessed Olivia Petter in British Vogue. And she's not alone. Considering how devoted the novel's aficionados are, it was inevitable that any film which diverged from the text would be taken by some as a personal attack.The irony is that Fennell professes to adore the book as much as anyone. At the Brontë Women's Writing Festival last September, she said that she had been "obsessed" and "driven mad" by Wuthering Heights since she read it as a 14-year-old. "I know that if somebody else made [the film], I'd be furious."She's probably not too worried, then, that other people are furious about her. In fact, she may be quite pleased. Every time new information about the film emerges, there are thousands of impassioned words written about it, and while they aren't all flattering, they have undoubtedly helped to raise awareness and build anticipation.Could "Wuthering Heights" really be as over-the-top as the trailers suggest, we asked. Could it be so-bad-it's-good? Or could it even be… good? Certainly, social media reactions from an early screening have been strong, with one film writer even moved to declare it a "god-tier new classic"."I personally cannot wait to watch Fennell's Wuthering Heights," wrote Olivia Petter in Vogue. "I'll admit, as a dedicated fan of the book, I was sceptical at first. But now, I no longer care about accuracy."The old saying about there being no such thing as bad publicity has never been more true. (Nicholas Barber)
Last night at the London premiere of “Wuthering Heights” Oscar-nominated actress and producer Margot Robbie walked the red carpet in Leicester Square wearing a custom Dilara Findikoglu inspired by a bracelet that belonged to Charlotte Brontë.The intricate, delicate bracelet features hair from two people, believed to be her sisters, Emily and Anne. During the Victorian era hair jewellery was fashionable and widely worn and it was common practice to make mourning jewellery incorporating the hair of a deceased relative. The bracelet is made of a wide band of braided hair with a gold clasp set with garnets and has been owned by the Museum since 1923.The original bracelet is currently on display at the Brontë Parsonage Museum alongside other examples of mourning jewellery.Rebecca Yorke, Director of the Brontë Parsonage Museum said: “The museum holds the world’s largest collections of Brontë manuscripts, clothing and personal possessions and we take our responsibility as custodians extremely seriously.“This event has offered us an unprecedented opportunity to share an item from our collection and tell its story with a global and contemporary audience, and we are thrilled that, thanks to director Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie and everyone involved with the film, Emily Brontë and her masterpiece continue to be part of popular culture almost 200 years after her death.”Rebecca continued: “We were delighted to work in partnership with Wyedean Weaving, based in Haworth, to create a faithful and high quality replica bracelet which Margot Robbie wore on the red carpet, and to facilitate visits from Dilara’s team to view the original bracelet.”
I’m here to see it for myself. It’s a pilgrimage I’ve long dreamed of making, and I begin in York, the city where Emily Brontë’s sisters, Charlotte and Anne, rested overnight en route to seeking a sea cure for the tuberculosis that would eventually take Anne’s life (a small plaque marks the site of the long since demolished inn on Coney Street). Then I travel to the village of Haworth, where the Brontës spent the majority of their too-short lives.“People have a very strong idea of the landscape when they think of the Brontës,” says Ann Dinsdale, principal curator of the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth. “They conjure up images of wild, rugged moorland scenery, and of course, that applies mainly to Wuthering Heights.”She’s exactly right about these romantic notions, I think, as I explore the rooms where these writers lived—the small couch upon which Emily died, the narrow windows from which the sisters saw their world, the tiny books they created in childhood with handwriting so minuscule a magnifying glass is needed to read the words. I’m among those who have romanticized the world of the Brontës, as though I’ve created my own movie version of their landscape in my head.Certainly, Emerald Fennell must have been aware of how strongly readers like me feel about the world of the Brontës when she set out to make her film. I learn that to find the ideal locations, her team tapped Aurelia Thomas, a veteran of British film and television, to be the supervising location manager of Wuthering Heights.“It was very much the thing from the outset, how important the landscape was to this film,” Thomas tells me. “So much of the story, and how Cathy and Heathcliff’s love is so doomed and bleak in a lot of ways, comes from the setting and this feeling of desolation. The landscapes they walk in almost have a personality of their own. So it was a very important thing to find and to get right.”Thomas and her team scoured the peat and heather moors of Yorkshire, looking specifically for open, wild land far off the beaten path (and often far from road accessibility). They deliberately sought filming locations that had not been used in previous adaptations of the story, instead spending months searching for places that would, as Thomas says, “feel different and epic.” They passed on anything too flat or too close to a village road, or anything that felt too idyllic or pretty.Interestingly, this meant refraining from filming in Haworth itself, the village where Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights and the landscape where she would have freely roamed. Dinsdale notes that while Haworth has become “this rather haunting, kind of romantic place” nowadays, the Haworth of the Brontës’ time wasn’t entirely remote or untouched. Rather, it was an industrious, albeit very small, village.The parsonage where the sisters lived and penned their works was perched at the edge of the moors and the edge of the village, straddled between two worlds. I feel that intensely. The front door of the parsonage looks out onto the graveyard, with enormous, moss-covered tombstones. The back looks out onto the edge of the moor. It’s haunting and eerily beautiful, yet also quite popular, both with tourists and those walking the many paths leading from the village into the countryside.Instead, Fennell’s crew turned to remote stretches of moorland, specifically Booze Moor and Reeth Moor in North Yorkshire and Bridestones Moor in West Yorkshire, as well as Arkengarthdale Moor and Reeth Estate, two vast expanses of land. The result is a scene that feels otherworldly, epic, and wildly dramatic.Yet it also feels somehow within reach. “The goings-on in Wuthering Heights are so Gothic and over the top. But the action isn’t happening in a castle in Transylvania—it’s in a Yorkshire farmhouse,” Dinsdale says. The places they filmed feel like real places, because they are. They are places of wildness that I can step into, landscapes I can inhabit.The great 20th-century literary critic and author Elizabeth Hardwick observed that “the moors provide the isolation, the loneliness, and the removal that are essential to [Wuthering Heights].” I’d argue they also provide the central spirit of the story. The eternally restless and wounded feelings aren’t just emotions that Brontë wrote about in her novel or that Fennell depicts in her film. (Madeline Weinfield)
The Brontës lived in the Haworth Parsonage - eight miles west of Bradford - from 1820 and remained there until the death of the last surviving family member, Patrick Brontë, in 1861.Located on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, their life at the Parsonage had a profound impact on their literary works, particularly felt by Emily Brontë.Charlotte Brontë wrote, “My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was – liberty.”Emily Brontë was inspired by the real-life locations she would regularly come across whilst walking across the “wily, windy moors.”For example, located just under three miles from Haworth Parsonage, the abandoned farmhouse, Top Withens, has a strong connection with the novel and is a popular pilgrimage site for literary tourists.It has been associated with the inspiration for the Earnshaw home, but that has never been confirmed or verified. A commemorative plaque on the farmhouse states: “The buildings, even when complete, bore no resemblance to the house she described, but the situation may have been in her mind when she wrote of the moorland setting of the Heights.”Written almost 180 years ago, Wuthering Heights has become an enduring figure in the pop culture zeitgeist with over 15 movie adaptations, many stage productions and a timeless music video from Kate Bush keeping the legacy of the novel alive and kicking.Over the years, film productions have realised that one of the best ways to capture the mood and atmosphere which made Brontë’s novel so effective is to retrace the author’s footsteps and film in Yorkshire.The first adaptation of ‘Wuthering Heights’ was directed by A.V. Bramble and filmed in Haworth in 1920. However, the silent movie was considered lost for many years, leading to an appeal by the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 2005 to trace the film.Speaking with the BBC, the librarian at the time, Ann Dinsdale said: "The film's makers went to a lot of trouble to ensure the accuracy of the film, shooting it on location.”Like many filmmakers before her, Emerald Fennell also saw the value of filming parts of ‘Wuthering Heights’ in its original setting. It was a big task and “huge responsibility” to bring her vision of Bronte’s novel to life and one she described as “an act of extreme masochism.”Speaking at the Brontë Women's Writing Festival in Haworth, Fennell said: “It's a huge responsibility because I know that if somebody else made it, I'd be furious. It's very personal material for everyone. It's very illicit. The way we relate to the characters is very private, I think."She added: “It has also felt like an act of extreme masochism to try and make a film of something that means this much to you. I've actually found it quite harrowing, in a really interesting way.”To capture the “misty and cold” atmosphere of the novel, Emerald Fennell shot her movie across various locations in Yorkshire, including Swaledale. Whilst in the North Yorkshire valley, filming took place at the ruins of the Old Gang Lead Mines, the Grade II listed Surrender Bridge and Melbecks Moor.The cast and crew also spent time in Arkengarthdale as they filmed on Booze Moor and in Langthwaite Village.Shazad Latif, who plays Edgar Linton in the upcoming adaptation, told the Yorkshire Post about his experiences filming in these dramatic locations.“The set design created by Suzie Davies for the houses was unbelievable. Obviously, the moors were amazing. You can feel the echo of Cathy and Heathcliff’s spirit up there,” said Latif. “It’s a stunning place to be and it evokes the spirit of the story that’s been there for 200 years. And it’s bloody windy!”Providing solace from the long and tiring days filming on the Moors, the cast and crew stayed at Simonstone Hall Hotel - a stately home renovated into an upscale hotel in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.The cast also spent time in local pubs after they finished filming and were seen in The Punch Bowl Inn (Low Row), The CB Inn (Arkengarthdale) and Green Dragon Inn (Hardraw.)“I didn’t have much filming to do [in Yorkshire], so I got to sit in the pub and wait for Jacob and Margot with Alison [Oliver] and Hong [Chau.] We would have drinks and play pool. It was great being stuck in there together. There were peacocks running about and a waterfall where they filmed Robin Hood: 'Prince of Thieves', five minutes across the farm, so it was just an amazing setting to be in.”Over the years, literary tourism has drawn people from all over the world to Yorkshire as they get the opportunity to explore the natural beauty and unique charm of the region. As Wuthering Heights is released in cinemas across the country, there will inevitably be a renewed interest in the beauty and mystery of the Yorkshire Moors, with people hoping to retrace the steps of Emily Brontë, Catherine and Heathcliffe [sic]. (Adam Davidson)
Emerald Fennell isn’t mucking about with Wuthering Heights. “Inspired by the greatest love story of all time,” roars the trailer for her new film, blasting us with sodden shirts and brutally tight corsets, bloody sunsets and Versailles-worthy interiors. Margot Robbie’s Cathy strides across a moor in a windswept wedding dress and Jacob Elordi’s ripped Heathcliff licks a wall and growls, “Kiss me and let us both be damned.”Damn Emily Brontë too because in the hands of Fennell, the writer-director behind Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, this is period drama at its most transgressive and maximalist. [...]Timid this ain’t, and it all starts with Fennell. Richard E Grant, whom the director cast as a haughty aristo in Saltburn, salutes her “fearless, jet-black sense of humour and baroque aesthetic”. Wuthering Heights, he says, is another “story of an outsider wreaking havoc on a hermetically sealed world — class, sexual obsession, doomed romance. I anticipate that her vision will be the polar opposite of polite.”“I like a physical response… and there’s nothing more physical than Wuthering Heights,” Fennell said on the Ruthie’s Table podcast this week. Brontë’s doomed and, yes, kinky romance is “extremely sexy… It makes you cry, it makes you recoil… It makes you question yourself.” Adapting it has been no moorland picnic. “I’ve been obsessed. I’ve been driven mad by this book,” she told the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival last year. “There’s an enormous amount of sadomasochism [in it]. There’s a reason people were deeply shocked by it [when it was published in 1847]. But it’s been a kind of masochistic exercise working on it because I love it so much, and it can’t love me back.”If anyone can pull it off it’s Fennell, 40, whose career has been powered by audaciousness, imagination and the marble-chiselled self-belief of the posh. The woman with a name like a Farrow & Ball paint shade started as an actress but moved with impressive briskness from playing Nurse Patsy Mount in Call the Midwife and an Emmy-nominated turn as Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown to directing darkly glamorous, divisive movies. “In our culture now we get the brakes being put on creatively… We’re afraid of embarrassment,” she told Ruthie’s Table. “I don’t mind being embarrassing.” [...]Film, though, is her main event and there she owes a debt to her star Robbie — Promising Young Woman and Saltburn were produced by LuckyChap, a company the Australian actress co-founded that specialises in female-focused projects. Wuthering Heights is the first time Fennell has directed her de facto boss, and some have cocked eyebrows at Robbie, 35, playing a character who is a teenager in the book. Fennell shrugged that off, describing Robbie as “the type of person who, like Cathy, could get away with anything. I think honestly she could commit a killing spree and nobody would mind.”She has also drawn flak for casting Elordi as Heathcliff, who is described by Brontë as “dark-skinned”. That was also smoothly batted away. “You can only ever make the movie that you sort of imagined yourself when you read it.” Fennell told The Hollywood Reporter. ““There are so many different takes. I think every year we should have a new one.” She cast Elordi after seeing him on the set of Saltburn one day. “He “looked exactly like the illustration of Heathcliff on the first book that I read”. (Ed Potton)
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“I wasn’t always going to be in it. I was thrilled to be the producer, but at some point, we were talking about Cathy, and I decided to throw my hat into the ring,” [...]Robbie continued, “I’ve always wanted to be one of Emerald’s actors and fortunately, she felt the same way. It worked out wonderfully.” [...]“In my opinion, it is one of the greatest love stories of all time and it has a great cast and incredible actors. It’s a great film,” she added. (Latoya Gayle)
Since its publication in 1847, the great, canonical novel Wuthering Heights has inspired more than 35 film and television productions, beginning with a silent movie in 1920 and growing louder and louder over the course of a century until reaching its 2026 Emerald Fennell–directed crescendo.In this succession of adaptations, each filmmaker has gradually softened the original form—a dark and twisted story of obsession, generational trauma, and self-destruction—into something that more closely resembles a wild, cinematic love story. These adaptations, more often than not, have given credence to the saying, “Those who don’t create, destroy”—a saying that is also, ironically, the story of Heathcliff. Though Hollywood has continuously sought to portray him onscreen as a sexy, tormented, romantic hero, Heathcliff is really more like an awful boyfriend with a personality disorder who destroys the hearts and lives of innocents.It is a testament to our culture’s tendency to confuse toxicity with the heights of romance that when we read Catherine and Heathcliff’s story, we yearn to be loved so intensely that it might actually kill us. It’s a fantasy—and, moreover, a misunderstanding—that many of us take years to unlearn: In fact, love is not measured in units of suffering. [...]6. Wuthering Heights (1939), directed by William WylerThis film, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, is debatably the most romanticized adaptation. It also only covers the first half of the novel, which is the half where none of the haunting takes place.5. Wuthering Heights (1998), BBC Television adaptationDirected by David Skynner, this adaptation may be the most faithful to the novel, although the logline feels like it should really be “a legitimately crazy man takes revenge on a nice guy who did nothing wrong besides care for the woman the crazy man claims to love.” Heathcliff acts like a whiny little baby throughout this film, constantly throwing tantrums, running away, and slamming doors. Simply put, he’s insufferable. And I’ve definitely dated him. Fortunately, Cathy does an amazing job of haunting him later, appearing as a literal ghost he can see on the moors and as a little girl in constant flashbacks.4. Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” music video (Version 1)In the infamous music video for the verified ’80s banger “Wuthering Heights,” camp and pop culture icon Kate Bush whirls her arms around in a white dress, repeating Cathy’s desperate cry to “let me into your window” over and over and over, her huge eyes staring into the camera. (I don’t think she blinks even once.)She translates the gnawing, pining feeling in the novel, setting it to music that repeatedly crescendos, reaching a slightly higher pitch every time—which is sort of how it feels to be in a toxic relationship. Every time I hear it, it gets stuck in my head for at least three days. Come to think of it, becoming a musician might be the ultimate haunting tactic.3. Wuthering Heights (2012), directed by Andrea ArnoldA raw and devastating adaptation—easily my favorite one to date. Arnold’s Heathcliff is much more fully developed as a character, in part due to the more restrained performances and Arnold’s highly sensory style. But the filmmaker also incorporates one of the driving struggles of the original Heathcliff that every other adaptation cuts out: i.e., the racism he faces. By not whitewashing the narrative, Arnold allows for greater pathos to emerge from Heathcliff and Cathy’s entangled backstories.The movie ends almost immediately after Cathy (played by none other than Effy from Skins) dies, so the posthumous haunting is limited, but bonus points for Heathcliff being rendered as a real human rather than a cartoonish villain or heartthrob, which contributes to the melancholy atmosphere of the film that personally haunted me for days after.2. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1992), directed by Peter KosminskySure, Heathcliff (played by Ralph Fiennes) is seen giving Cathy (Juliette Binoche) a piece of paper on which he’s written down every day she has spent with the Lintons versus with him, and that’s super toxic, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s more important is that Cathy haunts the shit out of him in the second half of the movie. With Peter Kosminsky using the same actress to play Cathy’s daughter (also named Catherine) after she dies, Heathcliff is forced to lay eyes upon her exact face day after day. Unfortunately, this method of haunting does require you to get pregnant and have a lookalike daughter that lives with your toxic ex while you roam around the moors screaming and disturbing everyone. While that is clearly not advisable, I do admire the commitment.1. Wuthering Heights (2009), ITV miniseriesThis two-episode miniseries stars Tom Hardy as Heathcliff, but you may find yourself getting confused by who Tom Hardy is playing and what movie you’re watching, given he looks nearly identical to both Professor Snape and Edward Scissorhands. The brooding is so over the top you can’t help but laugh every time he slowly appears from behind a pillar. But Cathy (Charlotte Riley) running out of her home, pregnant, in the pouring rain to search for her childhood crush felt relatable. And Cathy and Heathcliff’s chemistry is actually amazing—which makes sense, as the two actors who played them later got married.Best haunting moment: When Heathcliff brings Isabella Linton home and tells her she has to sleep in a separate bedroom. This is because Heathcliff must sleep in his ex’s childhood bedroom, alone, next to a drawing of her. This is ideally how haunted I want my ex to be when he brings home a new girl for the first time. (Cazzie David)
In the almost two centuries since the Yorkshire sisters wrote their passionate and brave novels, the light of Brontë mania has barely dimmed.It’s shining brightly with anticipation now with Emerald Fennell’s ‘racy’ Wuthering Heights film landing in cinemas next week, and a fascinating biography of Charlotte’s life told through her extensive surviving clothing.Dress historian and illustrator Eleanor Houghton’s book is as riveting as Charlotte’s iron-busked corset and reveals the story of her ordinary life in Haworth, forbidden love, and fashion choices when fame came calling. Eleanor has worked as a costume consultant for film and TV, including the BBC’s To Walk Invisible and Gentleman Jack, and Frances O’Connor’s 2023 biopic, Emily.“The amazing thing about Charlotte’s clothing is that so much has survived,” says Eleanor, who researched and studied for her PhD, what she calls ‘the surviving witnesses to Charlotte’s life,’ through the gowns, bonnets, shawls, corset and boots that made up her wardrobe, along with letters and documents. Many exist because of a tradition of make-do and hand down.“When Charlotte died, she left everything to her husband Arthur Bell Nicholls and he and her father Patrick and housekeeper Martha Brown treasured many items as keepsakes.” Some items that were dispersed to families and souvenir hunters have migrated home to Haworth with 150 pieces housed in the Brontë Parsonage Museum.Charlotte’s garments and accessories play a vital part in joining the dots of her history in intimate detail from her birth to her death. “They have been active participants in a remarkable life - one that was both extraordinary, public and private, obscure and famous,” says Eleanor. “Secrets have been found within their very fibres. They challenge a lot of myths and preconceptions that we’ve had about Charlotte and her family.”One such object that still bears signs of Charlotte’s perspiration is a busked corset that she laced excruciatingly tightly like ‘a form of armour that shielded and fortified’ when she was broken-hearted through the unrequited love that she bore for her former teacher Constantin Héger in Brussels. “She’s kind of girding her loins quite literally, giving herself this strength. I think the clothes can tell us so much, very personal detail that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up from a letter.”Charlotte made most of her clothes with Martha, buying textiles from the mills and accessing fashion plates.A Paisley print dress she owned dated to the 1840s was bold and bright, with a pattern inspired by silk shawls imported from central Asia. “One of the most astonishing discoveries was the bright colours of fabrics that we have revealed by examining fragments through a microscope and harnessing modern technology,” says Eleanor. “We imagine drab colours, but they simply weren’t. Globalisation is another insight.”Charlotte owned a pair of beaded, deerskin moccasins made by members of the Mohawk tribe in Canada.When Charlotte published Jane Eyre, she used the pseudonym Currer Bell to disguise her female authorship. When the cat was out of the bag and her secret identity uncovered, she needed to transition from a provincial clergyman’s daughter and governess to celebrated author, with some trepidation and nervousness. That meant wearing a suitable ‘power’ gown when she was invited to attend lunches, dinners, lectures and parties by enthusiasts, influencers and the literati.When she met her literary hero William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair, in 1850, she wore a two-year-old Prussian blue dress woven at Salts Mill, from alpaca fibres from South America. The fabric was printed in Lancashire, probably in Accrington. Hand stitching by Charlotte and Martha still exists.“She was in a very nervous state when she went to London for that important meeting in a new environment, a new world and meeting famous people,” Eleanor says. “When we choose clothes, we want to give off the right messages and feel strong, and Charlotte knew that was a potent force. It surprised me how important it was for her to gain strength through her regional identity and wear cloth woven in Yorkshire. She chose to connect to those Yorkshire roots.”Eleanor has drawn an illustration of the Thackeray Dress, and the altered original is at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.Poignant items include an ‘ugly’ or wind bonnet - strips of silk were worn over the brim to protect the wearer. They were the height of fashion at the seaside and Charlotte may have worn hers when she was in Scarborough with her sister Anne, who died there during their visit, whilst they were still in mourning for Emily. They had stopped on the way to purchase accessories in York.“Surviving garments are solid witnesses because you can’t always trust portraits and photographs as they are often staged with props, they are not candid,” Eleanor adds. “The real Charlotte emerges as a woman altogether braver, more vulnerable, less isolated, less provincial and more fashion conscious than anyone ever expected.” (Catherine Turnbull)
Asst. Lect. Mohsin Kamil Shlaka, Imam Al-Kadhum College I.K.CWasit Journal for Human Sciences, 22(1), 1363-1352.This study focuses on the central role of the natural environment, particularly harsh weather and storms. It reveals how nature in the novel embodies an active force that shapes characters' emotions and choices, reflects their inner conflicts, and sustains a constant tension between the human and natural worlds. From this perspective, Brontë offers an early vision of modern environmental thought by highlighting the profound connection between human experience and the surrounding environment.The research methodology employs a descriptive-analytical approach using textual analysis within an eco-critical framework. The procedures include a meticulous reading of the novel to extract natural symbols, environmental allusions, and images of the relationship between humanity and nature, followed by analysis in accordance with the principles of ecocriticism. This textual analysis and the ecocritical framework aim to provide a deeper understanding of the environment's role in shaping the narrative discourse and the characters' psychology.
While Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights proved itself a lightning rod for controversy from the jump, Margot Robbie has the stamp of approval from Emily Brontë herself – or, as close as one can get to it, anyway.For the London premiere, Robbie wore a replica of a bracelet once made of the writer’s own hair. A piece of Victorian mourning jewellery, the original piece was owned by Brontë’s sister, Charlotte, and made from Emily and Anne Brontë’s hair. Haworth-based Wyedean Weaving fashioned a reproduction of the 175-year-old bracelet. (Hannah Jackson)
Last night at the London premiere of “Wuthering Heights” Oscar-nominated actress and producer Margot Robbie walked the red carpet in Leicester Square wearing a custom Dilara Findikoglu inspired by a bracelet that belonged to Charlotte Brontë.The intricate, delicate bracelet features hair from two people, believed to be her sisters, Emily and Anne. During the Victorian era hair jewellery was fashionable and widely worn and it was common practice to make mourning jewellery incorporating the hair of a deceased relative. The bracelet is made of a wide band of braided hair with a gold clasp set with garnets and has been owned by the Museum since 1923.
"Wuthering Heights has been around for so long that I think we all have a sense of what the story is that we’ve seen or heard about many times, but most of us really don’t know it, don’t know the text as well as we think. Hopefully, this film will reignite ideas that others already have about Wuthering Heights, as it did for me," he says. [...]He shares his thoughts on getting into the project and choosing the script, "I knew that with Emerald Fennell, this wouldn’t be the traditional character that we know in our consciousness, but that it would be Heathcliff interpreted through her lens, with her unique point of view. She knows the character and this story so thoroughly, and I was really interested in that interpretation. I believe in her as an artist and especially as a director, and I want to be in her cinematic world, however I can."This interpretation by Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve, Saltburn), who has scripted and directed the film, comes amid a lot of questions about turning it into an almost-erotica. However, the actor himself is quite well-versed with it, expecting so while stepping into the project. He is ready to provide full support to the filmmaker and adds, "What Emerald captured in her script and ultimately in the film is the spirit of Emily Brontë, the spirit of Wuthering Heights, what is happening in the subtext of the book. She’s interpreting it through her own lens, through a modern lens, and that was exciting to me." (Ayushi Agrawal)
Ever wondered how an actor from Brisbane, Australia, perfects a Northern accent?The answer may surprise you."I just practise it in the bath, over and over and over and over," said Jacob Elordi, who is starring as Heathcliffe in the hotly anticipated new film Wuthering Heights, set on the tempestuous Yorkshire moors."I like the meks and the teks, instead of take. I like the M-E-K, T-E-K," he said, spelling the words out. (Noor Nanji)
"Everyone's talking about how steamy it is, but I think people might be surprised about how emotional it is," Robbie, who also produced the movie, said on the red carpet. "It's pretty heart-wrenching, but beautiful. It leaves you with that full feeling, if that makes sense."Elordi described the experience of making the movie as "the greatest journey" and "a wonderful adventure", saying that his version of the famed literary character was grounded in Fennell's vision."I just wanted it to be as, I don't know, sort of, truthful as possible, I suppose. But really, I'm in service to Emerald, so I just wanted to do whatever she wanted with him," said Elordi, who previously starred in Fennell's 2023 film "Saltburn". (Hanna Rantala)
Emerald Fennell has revealed that Margot Robbie asked if she could play the lead role in the adaptation of Wuthering Heights before she had approached the actor to do so.Robbie, whose production company LuckyChap Entertainment produced the film, asked if she could play Cathy after reading the script. “I sent it to them to produce, and Margot luckily asked if she might play Cathy,” said Fennell in conversation at the BFI Southbank in London.“I was very nervous to ask her, because I think we have a different relationship, and I didn’t want to put her on the spot,” she said. “I was like: ‘Do I go for it?’ No, I didn’t. Of course I didn’t, because she’s braver than me. She asked me.”However the decision to cast Robbie in the role of Cathy has led to much scepticism and scrutiny ahead of the film’s release, specifically for its departure from the original 1847 novel by Emily Brontë.Robbie, 35, will play Catherine Earnshaw who is written to be in her late teens in the original novel. The casting of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff has also been criticised. In the book, the character is described by Brontë to be of “Gypsy” and “Lascar” (South Asian) descent, which accounts for the prejudice against the him in the book.However Fennell defended her decision. “I can’t adapt the book as it is but I can approximate the way it made me feel,” she said. [...]The director also spoke about the background behind the set design in the film, revealing that the wallpaper in Cathy’s bedroom was inspired by images of Robbie’s skin.“We asked her to send us all her veins and her freckles, and then we printed it on silk and stuffed it and put latex over it so that it could sweat,” she said. “At first glance, you don’t see any of it, it’s just a beautiful pink room.”“It’s like a visual example of what it feels like to be made a wife, to be made an object of beauty, to be a collector’s item.”Other unconventional behind the scenes activity involved shrines Fennell made of Elordi and Robbie as a way to mimic the infatuation their respective characters have with one another in the film. “I was like: ‘I’m going to go through the internet, I’m going to find their best photos and then I’m going to make shrines in their bedrooms for each other,’” she said.“So when Jacob went into his room, he had an insane shrine to worship not just Cathy, but Margot Robbie and then she had the same thing. There’s nothing more humanising than somebody’s first press photo.”Fennell also spoke about the process of getting Charli xcx onboard to create the soundtrack for the film: “I sent Charli the script. Even though she was in the middle of the brat tour, the most busy person in the entire world, she read it immediately.”“She called me and said: ‘What do you want?’ I said: ‘Well, a song would be nice.’ And she said: ‘How about an album?’ And I was like: ‘Yeah, cool.’”“It’s so dorky, but it is my favourite album I’ve ever, ever heard in my life. She just got it.” (Sinéad Campbell)
Rare is the Wuthering Heights adaptation that fails to ruffle the feathers of the Brontë faithful. Andrea Arnold’s 2011 film was criticised for its grit and gloom while Emerald Fennell’s new version, which arrives in cinemas on Valentine’s Day, was described as “aggressively provocative” after test screenings. Perhaps now is the time to return to the source material. In the audioverse, there have already been readings by Michael Kitchener, Daniel Massey, Juliet Stevenson, Patricia Routledge and Joanne Froggatt, though I favour this 2020 edition narrated by Aimee Lou Wood, of Sex Education and The White Lotus fame. [...]Wood breathes fresh life into this tempestuous novel, capturing Nellie’s gossipy tone and the early wildness of Catherine and Heathcliff. As circumstances pull these once inseparable youngsters apart, that wild abandon curdles into desolation and discord that is carried down the generations. (Fiona Sturges)
I first read Wuthering Heights when I was 10 years old, growing up in Paris. Or rather, it was read aloud to me in French by my babysitter, every Wednesday night, one chapter at a time, as I lay in bed. I remember the anticipation more than anything, counting the days until the next installment. But I also remember a persistent dread that felt inseparable from the thrill of the story. I could see it all so clearly in my mind: the wild windswept moors, the oppressive house, the dark Victorian clothes. Heathcliff especially felt terrifyingly, seductively alive. I was afraid of him and drawn to him in equal measure.Nearly 30 years later, I picked up the novel again and read it in English for the first time. What surprised me most wasn’t just how different it felt but how difficult it was. The language is dense, complicated. I realized how much I had misremembered—or maybe how much I had romanticized. What I had held onto from childhood was the heat, the drama. But what I encountered as an adult was something dark and violent. Wuthering Heights offers very little comfort. It is a novel steeped in resentment and cruelty, in emotional and physical violence. There is very little tenderness or intimacy anywhere to be found.And yet my attachment to the book never faded. In fact, it deepened. I loved Wuthering Heights so much that it became the starting point for my fall-winter 2025 collection. I was drawn to its severity, the way desire and repression exist side by side. I loved its darkness, its melancholy, and translating that emotional landscape into clothes felt instinctive. I even gifted the book to everyone who came to see the show, tucking small mementos and pictures within its pages to invite them into the same world that had shaped the collection.When I reread Wuthering Heights for the third time recently, in anticipation of the upcoming film adaptation, I was also, like many people, absorbed (to use a euphemism!) in Heated Rivalry, a contemporary romance that shares, at least on the surface, striking similarities with Emily Brontë’s novel. Both stories are fueled by obsession, by that feeling that certain connections are inevitable, magnetic, impossible to resist. Both are about people who cannot stay away from one another, no matter the cost.Yes, there are the obvious differences of time and place. And in Wuthering Heights, passion is not so much a choice as it is a sentence. Catherine and Heathcliff don’t just fall in love; they are overtaken and destroyed by it. Their love, which Catherine compares to “the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary” (ouch), leaves no space for tenderness, compromise, or peace. Heated Rivalry, by contrast, begins with obsession but doesn’t end there. Desire is acknowledged; feelings are named. Vulnerability is allowed to enter the story. Passion is not punished; it is tested, shared, and ultimately transformed. Love becomes something Shane and Ilya actively choose, not just something that happens to them. It is something that eventually heals them.But both works—separated by two centuries—are not just stories of passionate love but of something more specific: exquisite, almost painful yearning. (You could add Bridgerton and The Summer I Turned Pretty to this genre.) Time and time again, we return to narratives built around ache and longing, stretched over long periods.I wonder if this says something about what we are collectively missing. We live in a world of constant stimulation and access—to people, to images, to desire itself. Romance has become efficient, frictionless. Connection is everywhere, yet true intimacy often feels elusive or absent. We have, as a culture, become so good at swiping, ghosting, blocking, moving on, keeping things light that yearning almost feels subversive.These stories don’t just promise romance; they promise intensity. They make desire feel consequential. In Heated Rivalry it shows up in the constant texting, the sense that Shane and Ilya are always thinking about each other, reaching for one another when they are apart. In Wuthering Heights, it takes a more feral form: an obsession that lingers long after separation and even death, an excitement bordering on mania when Catherine and Heathcliff are reunited. To want something—or someone—badly and over long periods of time feels almost radical in an age defined by immediacy and ease.And both stories are about a fear of transgression that interferes with love. Brontë, of course, was writing in a world that allowed romantic love very few viable happy endings, especially for women and especially across class lines. Wuthering Heights was written at the dawn of the Victorian era, in a culture defined by rigid class hierarchy and strict gender roles. Marriage was economic.Heated Rivalry is also shaped by constraint, just a modern version of it. Set within the hypermasculine world of professional hockey, where being openly gay can define—and destroy—a career, the risks are real. This is a love story between two men unfolding at a moment when “traditional” puritanical values are being reasserted, when gender roles are once again being tightly policed and social conformity is rewarded. And yet the story allows for the possibility of love blooming; it insists that intensity and tenderness can coexist.Maybe this is why stories of yearning continue to grip us: They remind us that feeling deeply still matters, no matter what societal or other lines it crosses. That we all deserve passion, to yearn, to be yearned for. But where Wuthering Heights imagines love as destructive, contemporary stories like Heated Rivalry allow for revision. For choice, agency, care.That evolution mirrors my own. I was once seduced by the idea of a love that overwhelmed, that burned. Today I am moved by passion that endures, that evolves, that makes room for tenderness, vulnerability, and intimacy without losing heat. If Wuthering Heights is a warning about what happens when love has no future, Heated Rivalry is a hopeful rewrite. Together they trace an arc from fatalism to agency, from tragedy to happy ending. And isn’t that an ending worth believing in?
Jane EyreJane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, tells the story of Jane, a strong-willed protagonist who grows up an orphan and faces cruelty at her childhood home and her boarding school. She grows up and becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, where she meets her employer, Mr. Rochester. Jane and Rochester’s deepening connection is put to the test by hidden truths and societal pressures. The novel points to themes of independence, morality, love, and social class structure following Jane's journey to find personal and emotional fulfillment in a restrictive Victorian world.Wuthering HeightsThe Brontë sisters, or should we say, Bell Brothers, were on a roll in 1847. The same year her sister Charlotte published Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë (Acton Bell) published her only novel, Wuthering Heights. Set on the wild Yorkshire moors, this Gothic tale unites intense themes of passion, obsession, revenge, and conflict. The story unfolds through multiple narrators, the primary being housekeeper Nelly Dean, as the orphaned Heathcliff grows up with the Earnshaw family and forms a deep and unstable bond with Catherine Earnshaw. After Catherine marries another man, Heathcliff returns rich and ready for revenge, manipulating the Earnshaw and Linton families. With its brooding atmosphere and hints of the supernatural, Brontë’s novel overflows with passion and lingering resentment. (Logan DeLoye)
7. ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily BrontëSet against the windswept Yorkshire moors, Brontë’s novel traces the all-consuming and often destructive love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Their bond is marked by obsession, jealousy and a relentless emotional intensity that drives the narrative across generations. Brontë explores how passion can both elevate and devastate, weaving in themes of revenge, social constraint and the dark impulses of desire. The novel’s Gothic atmosphere and raw portrayal of longing have inspired numerous adaptations, including the acclaimed 1939 film starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, which captures the brooding tension and turbulent romance of the original story, and more recently, filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s theatrical version starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, set for release on February 13. The novel has earned its place among spicy classic novels to read this Valentine’s Day, for its unflinching depiction of emotional and physical desire, offering a canonical example of fervent and tumultuous love in literature. (Chonx Tibajia)
8 ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) – 'Wuthering Heights' (1939)"Oh, God! It is unutterable." This one's back in the conversation thanks to the upcoming Emerald Fennell adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Emily Brontë’s only novel remains one of literature’s most tempestuous love stories. Set on the storm-battered Yorkshire moors, it follows Heathcliff, a foundling consumed by his obsession with Catherine Earnshaw, a passion so violent it transcends life and death. The book is gothic in its claustrophobia and psychological intensity, delving deep into revenge, class, and the self-destructive power of love.William Wyler’s 1939 film adaptation, with Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine, powerfully captures the tale’s doomed romanticism and elemental fury. It's a faithful reproduction of the novel's tone, if not all its narrative beats. The Oscar-winning black-and-white cinematography transforms the moors into a landscape of emotional chaos, while Olivier’s brooding performance brings the character vividly to life.7 ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847) – 'Jane Eyre' (2011)"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me." Emily's sister Charlotte revolutionized Gothic romance in her own way with this morally serious, psychologically complex tale. The novel follows orphaned Jane from a brutal childhood to her position as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls for the enigmatic Mr. Rochester, only to discover his terrible secret. Beneath these Gothic trappings is a moving story of integrity, independence, and female selfhood.Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 adaptation, starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, restores the novel’s eerie sensuality and feminist fire. It’s one of the most emotionally authentic versions of the book, with less melodrama and more moral clarity. Fukunaga frames Brontë’s world not as fantasy, but as realism touched by ghosts of memory, trauma, and forbidden love. The film's muted palette and candlelit interiors evoke both repression and longing, while strong lead performances (from Wasikowska, especially) do the rest of the heavy lifting. (Luc Haasbroek)
